


bewitched, bothered (and bewildered)

by fairwinds09



Series: can't give you anything but love [2]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Praise Kink, definitely NSFW, figuring out the kinks in the smuttiest sense possible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:35:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28034778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/pseuds/fairwinds09
Summary: It takes Donna about two months of sleeping with Josh to figure out he has a sort of praise kink. Figuring out what to do with that knowledge is both fascinating and a little overwhelming.Set during the Santos administration, and part of the universe of "let there be love."
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Series: can't give you anything but love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053545
Comments: 15
Kudos: 89





	bewitched, bothered (and bewildered)

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about putting this as another chapter in "let there be love," but that would've necessitated a rating change, so I'm letting it stand on its own. 
> 
> Watching Josh react to praise (or blame) in canon has firmly convinced me that he would be incredibly responsive to praise in bed, and thus this fic was born. Tbh, writing praise kink is not really my métier, so if this is insufficiently smutty, please be gentle. (Also, there are just some things I cannot imagine either of them saying, even in bed, and trying to stay in character was paramount in this endeavour.)
> 
> Finally, I did my best to emphasise consent on both sides, checking in, and so forth. I do think it's fascinating when characters are in an established, loving relationship and sort of unexpectedly uncover things about their partner that they didn't necessarily think would ever be there, and that's where Donna finds herself in this fic. She starts out just wanting to make sure he eats something and gets some decent sleep, and ends up with a whole lot more than she bargained for. Sometimes that just _happens_ on a random Sunday night, y'know?
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful betas K, C, and A, whose editorial skills are only surpassed by their unwavering friendship. Y'all always make my writing better. 
> 
> (Title from Ella's brilliant rendition, which is really the best of them all.)

It takes Donna about two months of sleeping with Josh to figure out he has a sort of praise kink. 

If she’d thought about it at any point in the prior nine years, she would have figured this out long, long ago. She’d spent quite a lot of time deliberately _not_ thinking about Josh’s potential kinks, though, and so this one comes as a bit of a surprise to her. When she goes back in her mind and starts putting the pieces together, it starts to make a great deal of sense. The way he would flush and preen when she complimented him, despite the fact that she was crossing all kinds of professional boundary lines. The way he sulked outrageously when she was displeased with him, and the one time she had called him _sir_ with absolute vitriol in her voice and he’d stared at her with utter shock, like she’d slapped him. She thinks even now he would prefer her slapping him to anything said to him in that tone of voice. It seems to cut at something deep inside him. 

It fascinates her. She’s no psychology student, God knows (or at least she never finished the psych degree she started and dropped one semester in), but she knows Josh. So much of him is loud and outrageous and absurdly full of himself, but _right_ beneath that brash surface are all his vulnerabilities, some hidden more deeply than others, and that desire to be loved and praised and petted runs through the core of him. She saw it time and again in the Bartlet administration, and to a lesser extent she’s seen it in the Santos White House too. Obviously with both President Bartlet and Leo it wasn’t in any sort of sexual context, but she still remembers the devastation on Josh’s face when Leo was freezing him out or when the president called him on the carpet. It went so much deeper than his fear of losing his job or losing prestige on the Hill. This was bone-deep, down at the marrow of him, the desire to please the people he admired and cared about, and the equally deep and terrible fear of letting them down, making them angry with him. 

He’s older now, more sure of himself in the ways that count, and she sees less of it with President Santos. She wonders how much of that is because Josh was part and parcel of the _making_ of Matt Santos. The president knows he wouldn’t be in the White House without Josh getting on that plane to Texas over a year ago, and Josh knows it too. The balance of power is a little more even these days. 

But Donna doesn’t really think about all this in the context of their private lives, hers and his, until she starts noticing a pattern. It takes her longer than it usually would to pick up on it, because she’s a bit distracted by her new job, and living with Josh, and _sleeping_ with Josh, all of which are fairly intense experiences. She thinks what finally clues her in is a Friday night at home, pizza and red wine on the couch, and then ending up in Josh’s lap because both of them have had a hellish week and it feels good to unwind and get a little tipsy and let their hands wander absolutely everywhere. 

Josh has his hands up her shirt, one firmly on her lower back, the other edging towards her bra clasp, and he’s doing something clever with his tongue as he works his way down her neck. She feels floaty, from the wine and the carbs and the way that Josh focuses just on her like the brilliant Fulbright scholar that he is. She grinds into him a little, sighing as he reaches that sensitive spot just behind her ear, and without really thinking about it, she murmurs, “God, _yes_ , just like that, Josh.”

Thinking back on it later, she’s sure she has said something like that to him before. She’s positive of it. She doesn’t know why he reacts the way he does this time, but it seems to strike a chord in him. She can feel the quick breath he draws in, the way his body surges up under hers. 

“Yeah?” he whispers against her skin, a little needy, and she smiles even though he can’t see her. 

“You’re… mmm, you’re good at that,” she tells him, and he breathes in again, sharp and shaky. The wheels start turning in her head, even though most of her brain is protesting that it would like to stay in the floaty wine-drunk blissed-out place it’s been in for the past fifteen minutes. 

“I want…” he starts, and then gets distracted by kissing her collarbone. She tugs on his hair lightly to get him to focus. 

“You want what?” 

He looks up, and she feels her own breath get a little shaky at the sight of his face, his eyes so dark, huge and hazy. He looks like he’s high off of her, and it makes her thighs clench around his hips, the idea that she can do this to him. _She_ can do this to him, she, Donnatella Moss. 

“Want to make you feel good,” he says softly, tugging her close to him, and she feels a sweet sort of ache in her chest. For all the times he’s driven her crazy and drives her crazy still, for all his stubborn monomaniacal tendencies, this is one of the things she loves best about him. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for the people he loves, and if there’s one thing she knows in this world, it’s that Joshua Lyman loves her. 

“You do,” she tells him, sliding her fingers into his hair because she knows he loves that. He smiles at her a little, still looking dazed. 

“Okay,” he whispers, and then he kisses her and she’s too distracted to think about how vulnerable he looked in that moment, like every word she said to him had the power to break him. Later, when she thinks back over that moment, it’s too terrifying to contemplate for long. She doesn’t really think she _wants_ the power to break someone with just a few misplaced words. 

* * *

The thought comes back to her a couple of weeks later. If she thought for even a moment that Josh’s week was bad a fortnight ago, this week has been ten times more brutal. He’s in a knockdown, dragout fight with the Senate over the budget, it’s been a struggle to get votes even within their own party, and she knows he’s made promises he can’t possibly keep to people who will most definitely keep score. What he’d ended up hammering out with leadership isn’t what anybody wanted, least of all President Santos, and she knows that it’s eating at Josh — the idea that he failed, that he brought his man into the most powerful office on the planet and now he’s letting Santos down. 

Donna has her own problems to deal with during the week. Helen’s education initiative is getting slashed and diced ten ways to hell during the budget negotiations, and Donna’s fighting with everything she’s got to keep at least some of the First Lady’s funding intact. She doesn’t have to go up against Josh, which is fortunate for his sanity, but she does yell at Sam for a bit until he caves and agrees to protect at least $100 million of funds designated for schools in high-poverty areas. Then she buys him his favourite panini for lunch from the mess, because Donna is a firm believer in keeping people happy until you actually need them to be in pain. 

Josh doesn’t come home on Friday night. Saturday night he stumbles in at 11:30 PM, his face drawn and haggard. He’s starting to scare her, honestly, looking like he did during the campaign, when she had started to worry that he was going to just keel over one day, the lack of decent food and sleep and relaxation wearing him down to nothingness. He sleeps a little, tossing and turning, and gets up and goes back in to the office Sunday morning. 

When he comes back in the early afternoon, Donna is just about done. He needs to eat something with green things in it, he needs to get his blood pressure down, and he needs to sleep. The problem is getting any of that accomplished while he’s at his current stress levels. 

The first part is simple enough. The second he comes through the door, greyer and more exhausted than ever, he stops and blinks, then sniffs. 

“Did you cook something?” he asks, a bit bewildered. He always gets like this when he’s tired, like his brain is taking an extra half-second longer to process what his senses are telling him. 

“Beef stroganoff,” she tells him. She’s standing in the doorway of their kitchen, leaning one hip against the doorway. She watches him take off his coat and scarf, moving a little slower than usual. 

“That’s one of my favourites,” he observes, and she grins, all teeth. An outsider might mistake this for her best June Cleaver impersonation. An outsider wouldn’t know her, and they certainly wouldn’t know Josh. 

“So it is,” she agrees, and she sees the suspicion light up in his eyes. 

“I have to go back - ” he starts, and she runs her tongue over her teeth, which is about as clear a signal as he’s going to get that she’s spoiling for a fight. 

“You do not, actually,” she says very calmly, and then turns back into the kitchen to stir the noodles. They’re almost ready. She timed this moment nicely, if she does say so herself. 

“Donna, I - ”

He’s right behind her, about to make his case, and she’s just done with it. 

“Josh, sit down,” she tells him without turning around. “Take your shoes off, pour a glass of wine. You’re not going back in today.”

She can hear the little huff of exasperation behind her, feels it tickle her right ear. 

“But I - ”

“There isn’t anything more you can get done tonight,” she says, peeking at the broccoli she has going on the back burner. “OMB has gone home by this point. I’m sure Sam sent most of the overworked assistants home, because he’s a much nicer person than you are. President Santos is in the residence, because he and the First Lady have an agreement that he spends Sunday afternoons and evenings with his family unless there’s a national emergency.”

“But there’s - ”

She continues, remorselessly. 

“If you’re thinking of calling up senators, let me assure you that the five you still need on your side are either out to dinner, home with their wives or mistresses, or, in the case of Hawgoode, with their feet up watching _Days of Our Lives_ reruns on Channel 8. The majority leader flew out to Martha’s Vineyard this morning to see his wife and grandkids and won’t be back until tomorrow morning, the minority leader is at some sort of gospel meeting revival in Harrisburg to remind all the evangelical voters that he’s really truly on their side, and the minority whip’s assistant called me this morning to beg you to leave him alone until 8:00 AM tomorrow morning.”

She pauses to take a breath and taste test her stroganoff. It’s damned good. 

“So…” she turns to stick her tasting spoon in the dishpan, “there really isn’t anything for you to do at present, other than sit down, take your shoes off, have a glass of wine, and eat the delicious dinner your girlfriend so thoughtfully prepared for you. For which, by the way, you have yet to utter a word of thanks.”

She waits for a second before she turns around, and she’s rewarded by the sight of Josh with his mouth sagging slightly open. She bites her lips together and raises an eyebrow as he ostentatiously bends down and unties one shoe and then the other. 

He straightens back up and carries his shoes to the rack in the entryway without a single word, then comes back in and leans in the doorway, mirroring her pose from earlier. 

“Have I ever mentioned how terrifying you are, and you’re not even my assistant anymore?” he asks casually, and she lets herself grin. 

“Was I really all that terrifying as your assistant, Josh?” she asks. She knows the answer to this question, but it’s still fun to hear him say it. 

“Absolutely petrifying,” he says, coming towards her in his sock feet. He stands behind her again, closer this time, and slips both arms around her waist, nuzzling into her hair. “You held my life in your hands and you knew it.”

She holds back the chuckle, but only just barely. 

“You’re lucky I liked you,” she says in her most severe tone, and he pulls her a little closer. 

“Liked, past tense?” he asks, mostly teasing and a little serious. She puts her hands over his where they’re clasped around her waist. 

“Love, present tense,” she says, and she feels him drop a kiss on the top of her head. “Okay, it’s ready. Dish up.”

He eats heartily, and she wonders if he even realises that he was hungry. She knows from experience on three campaigns and almost eight years working for him in the White House that he forgets to eat, runs on coffee and sporadic bites of junk food until he’s running on fumes. At least now he’ll have something nutritious in his system. 

(She ignores the nagging voice that tells her she’s not his mother, that he should take care of his own nutrition, he’s a grown man in his mid-forties. The voice is right, but she doesn’t care, not tonight.)

When they’re finished, she can tell the exhaustion is starting to catch up to him. He cleans the kitchen, banishing her to the living room to edit the First Lady’s speech to AFT tomorrow afternoon. When he’s done, he comes to stand in the doorway, a dishtowel slung over his shoulder. Even tired as he is, he looks unfairly handsome, she thinks, his shirtsleeves rolled up and the light behind him. She smiles at him and holds out a hand. 

“Come sit with me,” she says, and he gets that cagey look in his eyes. 

“Donna,” he says warily, and she waves him toward the couch. 

“Just for a few minutes, okay? You need to relax some or you’ll never get to sleep tonight.”

He looks around, frowning. 

“It’s 6:30 PM,” he points out, and Donna refrains from saying _well yes, and you’ll be up at 4:30 AM, so you might as well get ready for bed now_. 

“Just come over here,” she says, and he reluctantly joins her. Sometimes it drives her completely crazy that Josh is like this — so unwilling to let go of work when it’s just the two of them. She knew it would be this way when she moved in with him. For God’s sake, she worked for the man for nine years of her life, she knew _exactly_ how it would be. And most of the time, she knows he tries to not bring work home with him. This just… isn’t one of those times. 

He sits there for about fifteen minutes, pretending to read _The New Yorker_ , but she can tell his mind is whirring. She can practically _hear_ it. 

(Also it will be a cold day in hell when Joshua Lyman voluntarily reads _The New Yorker_. She knows perfectly well he picked it up deliberately as a protest, a silent message that he’ll pretend to relax to make her happy but he’s not actually going to read something that interests him.)

“Josh,” she says, nudging his thigh with her toes. He starts up far too fast, which tells her his nerves are jangling. 

“What?”

“You’re not really reading that.”

His eyes shift sideways and then down, an almost foolproof tell he’s about to lie. 

“Yes, I am, there’s this whole thing in here about the catastrophic results of oil spills in Alaska on wild salmon populations, and - ”

She nudges him again, a little harder. 

“You hate _The New Yorker_. And I know you’re thinking about the budget negotiations.”

He stares stubbornly the page in front of him for another 30 seconds and then caves. 

“Fine.” He tosses the magazine onto the coffee table. “I just — how I am supposed to _not_ think about them, Donna? I have to round up another five votes tomorrow to even have a _hope_ of getting this passed, and if we don’t get it passed we’re looking at a potential shutdown, and I - ”

He stops talking mostly because her mouth is in the way. She kisses him thoroughly and with the considerable knowledge she’s developed in the course of months together; she knows exactly how he will respond when she bites his bottom lip and cups his face in her hands, how he’ll make a little noise in his throat when she runs her index finger around the shell of his ear. It takes him a little longer than usual to lose himself in her, but she knows the moment he does, all the fight going out of him. It’s replaced with a different tension, one that’s more natural, springing up from the depths of him. 

“Donna,” he murmurs when she lets him talk again. “What are you doing?”

“Distracting you,” she says gently, although this seems obvious because she’s loosening his tie and has shifted so that she’s straddling his thighs, her knees neatly bracketing his hips. “You seem to need it.”

“Donnatella,” he tries again, but she’s unbuttoning his shirt now and he seems to lose his train of thought somewhere around the fourth button slipping loose. “I don’t think…”

She tugs his shirttails out of his waistband and starts industriously shoving the shirt off his shoulders. 

“I don’t need you to think, Josh. I counted it up while I was fixing supper, and it’s been a week and a half since we’ve had sex. A week and a _half_. The last time I went this long without having sex was when I was working for you.”

He blushes, which she finds adorable, but she does not let herself get distracted from the task at hand. 

“That is not quite true,” he starts to argue, and then hisses a little when she unbuckles his belt and reaches inside his waistband to find the button tab. 

“Isn’t it?”

“We didn’t... _ohh_...that is, the last couple of weeks of the campaign…”

He loses track of his argument completely when she draws his zipper down. 

“We were all over each other the last couple of weeks of the campaign,” she informs him, which is God’s honest truth. She really can’t remember sneaking around more, other than the summer of her junior year in high school when she was dating a college freshman home on break. She and Josh were exactly like horny teenagers when they first started sleeping together, campaign be damned. 

“Well, yes,” he says, shifting a little as she starts rucking up his undershirt. “Donna, what are you - mmmmph.”

In an effort to get him to focus on something other than arguing with her, she had simply tugged his undershirt over his head and left him to figure his way out of it, which ends up occupying him for long enough that she can anticipate his next round of objections. 

“Joshua,” she says calmly when he emerges. “I’m trying to get you out of your pants. Literally. That’s what I’m doing.”

In an effort to underscore her point, she pulls her T-shirt over her head and unclasps her bra, which has the desired effect of rendering Josh speechless. 

“ _Donna_.” 

His voice is somehow breathy and yet darker, and even though she knows he’s dog-tired, she can see the pulse pounding in his throat. 

“Fine, Josh, if you won’t go first.”

She stands up and shimmies out of her yoga pants, well aware that his eyes are glued to the way her breasts are swaying with the movement. When he looks back up at her face, there’s a pleasing flush over his cheekbones. 

“Josh, you want to…?” She gestures to his pants, which are unzipped but still on, and he quickly stands up to divest himself of them. 

“I, uhhh…”

His brain seems to stall for a moment, and she takes pity on him, standing close and sliding her hands around to cup his ass. His eyes flutter closed, and she smiles even though he can’t see. She loves him, loves him like crazy, this workaholic idiot with nothing on but his socks and his boxers. 

“Donna,” he murmurs, reaching for her, and she sighs as he pulls her into him. There’s something about this kind of contact, quiet and intimate, that settles things deep within her. She thinks part of the reason they’ve both been stressed and jumpy this week is that they were missing this, just holding each other, skin to skin. Then she laughs a little, thinking about moms and babies and kangaroo care and how humans really don’t change that much from birth to death, still needing those moments of connection, everything else stripped away. 

“What’s funny?” he asks, his mouth muffled in the curve of her neck, and she reaches up to play with his hair. 

“Just thinking about how much less stressed the Hill would be if people did this more often,” she says, and he laughs too. 

“Depends on who they’re doing it with, really,” he says drily, and then they’re both snorting, despite their own flirtation with the line of professional vs. illicit. It feels good to be able to laugh about it now, she realises. 

“Come take a shower with me,” she says, moving her hands up to stroke the skin of his waist. He was so thin after the election, terrifyingly so, bones starting to show starkly under the skin. He’s gotten better in the months since, but she still worries, tracing her way along his ribcage. He needs food and sleep (and a less stressful job, really, but they both know that’s not happening). And she needs to know that he’s going to live longer than the next ten years, or twenty. She can’t lose him, not when she knows what it feels like to stand over him and think he’s going to die. 

He must feel the shiver that chases over her exposed skin, because he doesn’t argue with her this time. 

“Okay,” he says quietly, and he helps her push down her underwear and step out of them. He’s gentle about it, rather than lascivious, and it makes something well up in her that feels perilously like devotion. He’s so sweet sometimes without even trying to be, and it hurts a little. 

She returns the favour with his boxers, and then, trying to lighten the mood, shoves him down on the couch and forcibly removes his socks, running her fingertips along his insole where she knows he’s ticklish. He gets her off balance and pulls her down on top of him, which is how they end up laughing like loons, stark naked, on the couch. She thinks between whoops of laughter that if anyone in D.C. knew how the president’s chief of staff spent his Sunday evenings, neither of them would ever get invited anywhere in town again. 

They’re still grinning, wide goofy grins, when she tugs him into the bathroom and turns on the hot water. She puts one of the eucalyptus lavender shower sachets that her sister got her for Christmas around the showerhead, and Josh gives her a dirty look. 

“You want me to smell all girly during my meetings tomorrow?” 

She just pokes him in the ribs, not particularly gently. 

“It’s supposed to relax you,” she says, poking him again until he opens the shower door and starts edging under the spray. “And if you don’t relax tonight, you’ll be useless in all of those meetings.”

“I am never _useless_ ,” he informs her loftily. “As a Fulbright Scholar with a 760 on his verbal SAT - ”

He shuts up when she steps in beside him and runs a hand up the inside of his thigh and then strokes the crease between thigh and groin. 

“There you go,” she says pleasantly, and reaches for the very manly-scented body wash she started buying him last month. “I’m thinking about doing that every time you start to mention your SAT scores, just so you’re aware.”

His eyes are dancing even as she lathers up her favourite sponge and starts rubbing his back. 

“I gotta say, Donna, I don’t know that that strategy is really going to be much of a deterrent,” he observes, which makes her whack him on the shoulder with the sponge. 

“Oww,” he says dutifully. “When do I get to hit you with sponges?”

“Not yet,” she informs him. “Turn around.”

She washes his chest carefully, remembering against her will those long, hot summer days when she’d clean his wound and put his bandages back on, remembering the way he’d watch her under hooded eyes, like he wanted so much more than he’d ever let himself say. 

He must see it on her face, the shadow of that distant horror, because he cups her face in his hands and kisses her, sweetly, like he’s trying to drive the memories away. She finishes washing him, and he lets her despite the fact that they don’t do this often. She needs it tonight, needs to take care of him and let him take care of her. It’s not something either of them is very good at, letting someone take care of them, and she thinks she’s going to have to get better at it if she expects him to as well. 

When it’s his turn, he foregoes the sponge in favour of lathering up his hands, and Donna realises very quickly that this was a tactical error on her part. It amazes her, how fast the mood shifts from tender and a bit sombre to Josh skimming his thumbs over her nipples just to make her moan. 

“What are you - ” she gasps out, and he grins, the grin that makes his dimples flash and his eyes spark with unholy glee. 

“You started this, Donnatella,” he reminds her solemnly, even as his hands slide down to her belly and the tops of her thighs. “I seem to recall a certain someone ripping my clothes off on our living room couch, trying to ravish me - ”

“For God’s sake, Josh, no one was _ravishing_ you, this isn’t a Harlequin romance novel.”

He spins her around and starts soaping her back, getting close to her ass with every pass of his hands but never quite going where she wants him. 

“Say what you will, Donna, but this is your fault,” he says smugly and then slides his hands down to cup her ass. She makes a noise that even she finds embarrassing, particularly because his shower is a walk-in and the tile makes it echo. 

“Mm-hmm,” he hums cheerfully, and she wants to strangle him, really she does. She lets him finish washing her, though, even when he’s teasing her unmercifully, hovering just next to where she wants him, refusing to move even a fraction of an inch. 

Once they’re both rinsed off, flushed and warm from the water and the ridiculous amounts of competitive foreplay they’re engaged in, she decides to kill two birds with one stone. She can win this before they even get out of the shower _and_ get Josh relaxed enough to go to sleep. 

She nudges him back a little, and, her hands on his thighs for balance, drops to her knees. (She’s learned to be careful in Josh’s shower - _their_ shower - because the tile floor is unforgiving if anyone slips.) Instantly she feels his hand in her wet hair. 

“Donna,” he says softly, “no. Not tonight.”

He reaches down, tugging her up carefully. (He’s learned to be wary of the floor too.) 

“Why not?” 

She’s learned that he’s weirdly finicky about her going down on him. He enjoys it, certainly — she’s never been with anyone who _hasn’t_. But he has an odd hangup about her getting on her knees to do it. He’s more or less fine with her going down on him in bed, but there’s something about the visual power differential that seems to bother him intensely. 

It does not, however, seem to work the other way. 

“Because I want to.”

She can see the exhaustion in his body in the way it takes him a moment to get to his knees. All his joints are stiff from the tension he’s been carrying in them for over a week. But when he is kneeling in front of her, he seems to relax, even though she knows from experience that the tile has to be killing his knees. 

“Josh…” she protests half-heartedly, but he reaches around to slide his hands up the back of her thighs, and the words die on her lips. “Mmmm.”

She sees a faint flash of dimples as he leans in to press his mouth to her belly. He takes his time, kissing slowly down to the crease of her thigh and torso, catching stray droplets of water with his tongue. She remembers the first time he did this, in a hotel shower that was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. She’d nearly torn the shower curtain down and was one yelp of his name away from getting a noise complaint, and he’d been unbearably smug the rest of the day. She slides her hand into his hair, chuckling a little as she remembers him strutting around like a king, so proud that he’d made her come twice, on his knees in a plastic hotel bathtub. 

Then he leans in and licks straight up her centre, a direct salvo, and she forgets anything but the feeling of his mouth right _there_ , almost where she wants him. He nudges her backwards until her back hits the wall, and then he gets his shoulders between her legs and spreads her open with his thumbs. She makes a high-pitched noise, which only seems to spur him on. 

“Higher, Josh, c’mon,” she pants, tugging at his hair to demonstrate exactly where she’d like him to go, and he groans, a noise that rips up from his gut and reverberates against her in a long delicious vibration. He does exactly as she told him to, moving his mouth up to fasten on her clit, and then he settles in, relentless, fast-paced, exactly the way he is when he walks and talks and does practically anything. Honestly, if Donna could think straight, she’d feel sorry for any woman who has not experienced Josh Lyman’s particular brand of obsessive sexual intensity when it comes to giving head. 

She can feel her orgasm building fast, the sweet dark heat building in the base of her spine and her belly, and she knows it’ll be harder, better, with his fingers in her. 

“Josh,” she grates out, barely able to think past the rising wave of arousal, “your fingers… right here,” and she grabs his hand from her thigh and puts his fingers where she wants them. He takes the hint and slides his middle finger into her, and then his index finger, stretching her just enough. She hisses at the sensation, and he pulls away, looking up in wordless alarm that he’s hurt her. 

She grinds down against his fingers and tugs at his hair. 

“Don’t you dare stop,” she manages breathlessly. “So fucking good, Josh… your mouth, it’s perfect, you’re so damn good at this… c’mon, finish what you started.”

She’s not sure if it’s the praise or the challenge that gets to him, but he redoubles his efforts, sucking hard on her clit and twisting his fingers inside her, and within a matter of moments, she breaks, crying out as she spasms around him. He keeps at it until she’s too sensitive to stand even his mouth on her, and she gently pushes him away. 

He gets up slowly, wincing at the pain in his knees. She’d spare a moment to feel sorry for him, but she’s still riding the high from her orgasm and there’s really no room in her brain for anything else right now. 

“Okay?” he asks, and she knows what he’s really asking. She lifts one hand, limply, and pulls him to her. She can feel him pressed hard against her belly, can feel the frantic drumming of his heart against her own ribcage. 

“More than okay,” she breathes into his chest. “God, Josh, you just… I can’t even form _words_ right now, all right?”

He laughs a little, pressing kisses to her forehead and her cheekbones, but she can feel the pride radiating off him. It’s the hotel bathtub in Des Moines all over again. 

“As soon as I get dried off, and I can breathe normally again and feel my legs, I am so very definitely going to return the favour,” she promises, and he laughs again. 

“Definitely the dried off part,” he stipulates, reaching over to turn off the water. “If either of us slips in here, we’re gonna break a lot of bones.”

She makes a face, stepping out and grabbing her towel off the hook. 

“Just think of having to get Sam to come rescue us,” she says, just to watch Josh shudder at the idea. 

“Don’t say things like that,” he orders, looking positively nauseated. “I can’t decide which would be worse — breaking both my legs or Sam seeing us naked.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him _breaking both your legs, I’ve broken one and it’s pretty brutal_ , but she doesn’t end up saying it. She doesn’t want to think about Gaza tonight, or about the scar that snakes its way up her leg, although she’s noticed over the past few months that Josh lingers on it when he goes down on her, much the same way she lingers over the one on his chest. It’s something primal, she supposes, wanting to prove one more time that they survived, they’re here, their hearts are still beating when it so easily could’ve gone the other way. 

Instead, she finishes drying off, hangs up her towel neatly because she does not believe in leaving wet towels on the floor (much less the furniture), and grabs his towel as soon as he’s done. 

“C’mon, I owe you one bone-shattering orgasm,” she orders, shoving him towards their bedroom. He smirks, insufferable ass that he is. 

“Bone-shattering, huh?”

“Shut up.”

He turns to kiss her once they’re standing by the bed, but at this point her competitive streak is out in full force, and she’s determined that not only is she going to make sure he sleeps tonight, she’s going to make sure he’s so boneless he can’t even _move_. 

“Uh-uh,” she orders, pointing at their bed. “Lie back.”

He raises an eyebrow. 

“So I’m just supposed to lie there and - ”

“Do as you’re told? Yes,” she says, and she might be wrong, but there’s a hint of something hungry in his eyes at the command. 

“Are you sure? As you’ve reliably informed me, I’m not good at doing what I’m told.”

He climbs into bed anyway, leaning back with his hands laced behind his head, the picture of insouciance. She considers him, her head to one side. 

“You usually did what I said eventually,” she points out, which is true. “And now you’ve got a built-in reward system for being good.”

She doesn’t miss it that time — something darkens in his gaze, and she can see his muscles tighten a little. 

“That’s true,” he says, and he sounds a little hoarse. She’s instantly intrigued. 

“So… are you going to stay still and behave for me?” she asks, and he swallows. 

“If you tell me to.”

“I’m telling you to.” She gets on the bed beside him, watching the way his eyes track down her body, lingering on her breasts and thighs. Slowly, letting him see what she’s doing, she reaches out and traces a hand down his chest, over his stomach, lazily following the trail of hair that leads to his groin. 

“Donna…”

She smiles a little and keeps going, away from his arousal to the tops of his thighs. She keeps her touch easy, almost too slow to be pleasurable, just to see what he’ll do. She traces down and up the inside of one thigh, then the other, before his hips arch up. 

“Donna, c’mon,” he starts, but she hushes him with a look. 

“You said you’d be good,” she says softly, and he subsides. As a reward, she leans down and presses a quick kiss to the head of his cock, which results in a garbled groan. 

“How am I supposed to be good when you’re doing _that?_ ” he protests, but he bites his lips together when she leans away and gives him a chiding look. She kisses him again, lightly on the cheek this time, and he stays still, although his eyes are caught between frustration and pleading. 

“I have great faith in your abilities,” she tells him, and then has an idea. Slowly, just as slowly as she went with her hands, she begins kissing down his neck, his chest, lingering just a bit over his scar. 

He holds out until she gets to his stomach. She nips lightly at his hipbone, and his whole body jolts. 

“Donna!” he yelps, and she raises her head to see he’s darkly flushed, eyes glittering. 

“Do you want me to stop?” she asks, giving him the out. If he’s not comfortable, she doesn’t want to keep going. 

“No, I just… I want to touch you,” he says roughly. He brings his hands out from behind his head, and she shakes her head firmly. 

“No.” His mouth opens, no doubt to argue, and on a whim Donna leans forward and captures both his hands in hers. “Leave them here.”

She lightly pushes his hands into the pillows and spares a moment to regret that his no doubt very expensive walnut headboard doesn’t have convenient posts to hold onto. 

“This is what I want,” she tells him, looking over him with pleasure. He’s a mess — auburn hair flying everywhere, fists clenched in the pillows, fully erect. She loves it. “You look so good like this,” she adds for good measure, and his eyes go wide. 

“O-okay,” he stutters, and she smiles as she leans down and begins slowly kissing her way up his thigh. He’s fighting to stay still, she can tell, and he does well until she reaches up and runs her finger up the length of his cock. 

“Fuck, _Donna_ ,” he shouts, his hips twisting up, although she notes with approval that his hands stay fisted tightly in the pillows. 

“Josh, hush, you’ll wake the neighbours,” she scolds. She starts very lightly tracing the exquisitely sensitive head of his cock, which makes him whimper and twist again. She places a firm hand on his hip. 

“Be _still_ ,” she says. “I already told you not to move.”

He grits his teeth. 

“I can’t, not when you’re - ”

He breaks off, shuddering as she leans down and takes him in her mouth. She swirls her tongue around him and gets the inordinate pleasure of listening to him groan again, deep in his chest. 

“Donna, _please_.”

He sounds so desperate, and he’s not even inside her yet. Donna’s quite proud of herself, really. She pulls off him, ignoring his noises of distress, and looks up at him through her lashes. 

“You’re doing so well,” she soothes, stroking his hip. “Just keep still for me, okay?”

“But - ” 

She leans back and gives him a look, and he stops arguing immediately. 

“Okay.” 

She decides that she ought to encourage further good behaviour, and therefore she licks her palm and wraps her hand around him, sliding up and down again slowly while he hisses curses out between his teeth. 

“I like you like this,” she tells him, speeding up a little. She’s not lying — he looks gorgeous, flushed and rumpled and kind of strung out. On the one hand, it’s the furthest thing possible from the power broker in a suit image he projects on the Hill. On the other hand, it’s not that much different… this is Josh at his core, messy and passionate and utterly unable to keep his mouth shut. 

“You like… torturing me,” he grits out, so she takes her hand away, leaves him red and swollen, desperate for relief. “God _no_ , Donna, don’t stop, I’m sorry, do whatever you want to me, just don’t stop."

She laughs a little and leans down to kiss his chest. 

“If you quit being rude, I might do better than just not stopping,” she says, teasing, and his eyes latch onto her face. 

“Yeah?”

She slips her hand down to play with his balls, and he jolts so hard he nearly knocks her sideways. 

“Yeah,” she says demurely. “If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” he says quickly and with considerable volume. “I’m… please, Donna, I’m… you’re driving me out of my mind here.”

She stretches out over him, her hands settling just above his shoulders, her center at his stomach. She kisses him, slow and deep, exploring, taking her time. 

“I think I want to drive you out of your mind a little,” she tells him when she raises her head. “I want to make you beg.”

He looks up at her, and his eyes — his eyes scare her a little. Not because she’s afraid of him. How could she be? It’s Josh. It’s more that there’s something there so incredibly unguarded that it steals her breath a bit. 

“You don’t have to make me beg,” he says quietly. “I’d give you anything. Everything.”

There isn’t anything she can say to that, so she does the only thing she can think of when he’s looking up at her with those eyes. She slides down, reaches for him and guides him into her, and slowly sinks down on him, letting herself be stretched open. She takes him bit by bit, never looking away from him, and to his credit, he stays perfectly still. He lets her take her time, doesn’t arch up into her, doesn’t try to start a rhythm. He just waits until she’s taken him in fully, her hands on his sternum for balance, her legs on either side of his thighs. 

“Donna,” he whispers, and that’s all he says. She rises up a little, pushes back down again, finding her rhythm, and she sees his hands twist amid the pillows. 

“You feel so good,” she says in a murmur and watches his eyes go hazy again, drunk with the pleasure. “You always make me feel good. God, the way I come so hard for you…”

He gasps, sharply, his head arching back. His eyes screw shut as she picks up her pace. 

“I always wanted you, Josh,” she tells him, leaning over him, sliding her hands up his chest. She cups his face with one hand, running her thumb along his cheekbone. “That rumpled suit and the dimples and your cocky grin, and I wanted you so badly, right from the start. Even when I tried to stop, it was always you.”

He whimpers, almost like he’s in pain, but she knows better. She knows him, as well as anyone could, and she knows that this is what he craves, this is the hunger she saw flashes of earlier. He arches up into her, urging her on, and she knows he’s getting close to the edge. 

“Yes, just like that,” she murmurs. “That’s exactly what I want. Faster, now. You're doing so well.”

He does exactly as she says, matching her breath for breath, and she feels her own orgasm building, flashes of heat along her spine. 

“I want you to touch me, Josh,” she orders, and his eyes fly open. “Do it.”

The sound he makes is utterly raw. 

“Tell me where you want me.” His voice is a ragged thread of sound. 

“Here.” She takes one hand and brings it to the curve of her ass, and brings the other to her clit. He wastes no time in following orders, rolling her clit between his fingers with the surety of months of practice. She tightens around him, and a mumbled _holy fucking hell_ flies out of his mouth. 

“Donna, I’m - ” he tries to warn her, but he can’t seem to find his words. She might like that best of all, driving the maddeningly articulate Joshua Lyman into wordless oblivion, but he’s starting to drive her to oblivion too, and she wants him to be the one to go first. 

“You’re doing just what I want you to, you’re perfect, yes, like that,” she tells him, even though there’s a small voice in the back of her brain hollering that telling Josh he’s perfect is a _terrible_ mistake. She ignores the voice, because Josh is pulling her close suddenly, pulling her down onto him, tight against him where every roll of his hips means she can grind her clit down harder onto him and it’s setting off sparks _everywhere_ , every nerve ending leaping from a low smolder into a raging blaze. 

“Donna - ” he begs against her neck while his hips work madly, seeking release even though he can’t go as deep in this position. “Donna, please…”

“I want you to come for me,” she whispers, right in his ear, and she slides her fingers into his hair, running her nails along his scalp and over the curve of his ear. “Come for me now, Josh.”

He falls instantly, his whole body electrified with that one command, and she feels him tense all over for one glorious moment before he’s shaking, spilling into her, groaning her name again and again, utterly lost to everything but her. She’s held state secrets in her hands, known things that could topple entire administrations, and yet this is the most powerful she’s ever felt in her whole life. 

Watching him unravel makes her grind down a little harder, and there it is, her own release spreading through her sweet and sharp, and the way she clenches down on him makes him moan again, burying his face in her shoulder and shuddering like he’ll never stop. 

When they both go still, they lie there for a bit, trying to find their breath. They’re both sweaty and a bit disgusting, and they’re definitely going to need another shower, but she feels easy and sated and more than a little satisfied. He’s going to sleep well tonight, and so will she. 

It doesn’t occur to her to worry until he shifts under her, pulling away a bit, and she rolls off him to lie on her side. He’s still staring up at the ceiling, his expression faraway, and she feels a twinge of alarm. 

“Josh?” she says quietly, but he doesn’t turn towards her. 

“I didn’t…” He starts and trails off. The alarm is more than a twinge now, and she reaches automatically for his hand, seeking comfort. He doesn’t pull away from her, just curls his fingers around hers, and some of her fear abates. 

“Didn’t what?”

He sighs, tugging their joined hands to his chest. 

“I’ve never had anyone… do that. Before.”

She frowns a little. 

“Do what, Josh?”

He shrugs. 

“Make me… lose control like that. Drive me to that point. I would’ve… I would’ve done anything, Donna. Anything.”

She feels guilt seep low into her belly. She just meant to get him to relax, and in the process give both of them some stress relief in the form of mutually beneficial orgasms. She didn’t really mean to break him open like this, and now she’s more than a little scared that she’s pushed him into something he didn’t want and wasn’t ready for. 

“Josh, I - ” she starts, ready to apologise, but he cuts her off. 

“I’d be terrified if it wasn’t you, you know?” he says, turning towards her. She bites her lips together, trying to control herself. He’s always been able to do this, devastate her with just a handful of words. 

“Josh…” she sighs, and he smiles a little, that crooked half-smile that means he knows he can’t win but he’s all right with it. 

“Don’t make me promise to get you the nuclear codes or anything, okay?” he says, and she knows it’s his declaration, as much as any _I love you_ he’s ever said. 

“Never,” she swears, and edges closer to him, enough to brush her lips over his shoulder. “Small things, maybe. Fort Knox. A permanent moratorium on all Wisconsin jokes. We’ll work our way up.”

His laugh lines deepen. 

“I’m not sure I can give up the Wisconsin jokes, Donnatella,” he says gravely, but his dimples are showing. “Nuclear bases are negotiable, but the Wisconsin jokes — that’s a lot to ask.”

She pinches him right over the ribs, just enough to sting. 

“Shut up, Joshua.”

* * *

She slips back into the bedroom hours later. They’d showered again — without any hijinks this time, mostly because Josh told her that she’d broken him for at least 24 hours and if he had another orgasm his legs might give out permanently. She’d made chamomile tea, over his stringent protests, and forced him to drink half a cup in exchange for her reading him the latest budget memos in bed. She’d looked over after two pages to find him fast asleep. 

She’d gotten up then, puttered around doing a load of laundry and getting her files together for tomorrow morning. She sets the alarm for 4:00 AM for him and a much more reasonable 6:30 AM for her, puts his briefcase by the door, and programs the coffee maker with a stronger brew than usual. When she finally makes it back to their bed, he’s still fast asleep, utterly exhausted, the lines on his face still there but smoothed out. She traces lightly along one of the lines in his forehead that only started showing up during the last year, somewhere between campaign stops and ad buys and Josh nearly driving himself into an early grave. 

He terrifies her when he gets like that, when he forgets to eat and sleep and take care of himself, but she comforts herself that it won’t be like that anymore. Not even in this job, with all its strain, it won’t be like that. For one thing, she won’t let it. For another, if she saw anything in him tonight, it was a willingness to let her take control when she wants it. He’ll never be passive — he’s not capable of it. But the Josh Lyman she knew nearly a decade ago has changed, and she’s beginning to think that when it comes to her, he’ll change more than she thought possible a year or two ago. 

She slides into bed next to him, and in his sleep, he snuffles and and rolls over towards her. She shifts until he’s behind her, his arm slung over her waist the way she likes. He mumbles something into her hair and then goes back to sleep, and she smiles a little. 

She likes them like this.   
  



End file.
